


Tumblr Prompts

by saltyplaydough



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21594208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyplaydough/pseuds/saltyplaydough
Summary: chapter 2 prompt:“You’re basically a marshmallow. Perfect for cuddling.”
Relationships: Aaron Dingle/Robert Sugden
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	1. Lunch Date

**Author's Note:**

> For @-apatico on tumblr who wanted: _Aaron or Rob being teased by other people about their relationship_ and _people seeing how much they actually like each other and how much of an impact they have had on each others lives._

“How’s thing two doing then?”

Aaron looks up just in time to catch Mandy’s snooping eyes zero in on his phone, her body leaning as far over the bar as her height will allow. He’s pretty sure she’s standing on her tiptoes to give herself more leverage. Aaron angles his phone away, typing out a quick response to Robert’s ‘ _Omw. Sorry!_ ’, before sliding it back into his front pocket. 

“He’s not the only person I talk to, is he?” he says, defensive and not liking the smirk Mandy’s got on her face one bit. He’s not trying to hide or anything—not in the slightest—but something about the way she’s looking at him, like he’s a snotty little boy she’s got all figured out, gets his back up.

“Of course not,” she says, clearly meaning the opposite. “But if that’s the smile you get talking to people other than your husband, then we’re in trouble, aren’t we?”

She’s full of it. ‘ _Omw. Sorry!_ ’ hardly warrants a smile.

“What was it then? Was it something naughty?” She gasps, hand on her chest and all, prompting Aaron to roll his eyes. “ _Aaron Dingle_! This is a respectable establishment. I won’t have you flashing nudes where everyone can see.” 

He’s sure his mouth is hanging wide open. He’s red now, he knows it. He can’t _believe_ she’s just… “ _Will you shut up_?” 

He scans the pub as subtly as he can, hoping the lunch crowd’s thinned enough that no one’s heard… except, there’s Jamie Tate, wide-eyed and staring back at him.

“Or was it something dead sweet?” He looks back from glaring Jamie’s eyebrows back down his forehead and his eyes back to his pork pie, to see Mandy’s got her chin propped on her fist, lashes fluttering like she’s got something in her eye. “Call you his honeybun, did he?” 

It shocks a laugh right out of him and for a moment he forgets he’s annoyed with her. “I’d like to see him try.” That would definitely be grounds for divorce. 

“You’re proper in love, aren’t ya?” Great. She’s all settled in for a chat now, looking comfortable with her arms crossed on the bar and completely ignoring Kerry’s request for a pint.

“Was it the wedding ring that gave it away?.” He means for it to come out sarcastic, but he looks down at his ring finger mid-sentence and his voice goes slightly soft towards the end and now Mandy’s looking at him too closely.

“Don’t let that one go.”

He scrunches his face at Mandy thinking he needs relationship advice from her. Like he’s ever leaving Robert again. 

“Us Dingles,” she stresses, her hand coming up to land on Aaron’s, “we don’t usually get to have love like this. And we don’t know what to do with it once we do. Don’t mean we don’t deserve it, yeah?”

 _I’m not exactly easy to love._ The memory of those words extend beyond that first proposal at the hospital, when he’d been filled with hope but worried that Robert wasn’t really grasping what a life with Aaron meant. It’s tied to hours of stillness as he lay in his old bed in Smithy Cottage and listened to Paddy potter around downstairs, a whole planet away; to a chill down his spine, a cold voice, a darkness from not long enough ago; to a desperate moment in a broken building, a chance he’d taken, and the silence that had followed; to months of second guessing his happiness, even when he finally had Robert to himself. 

But it doesn’t come with a sting of shame this time. It wafts over him, familiar, an heirloom of emotional scars and neglect he hopes he’ll lose in his care. He still thinks it’s true, but it’s not the weight it used to be. Because Robert makes it look easy. That’s also true. And it’s enough. 

He wonders how much Mandy knows. It can’t be hard to patch together a version of his life’s story with tragic newspaper headlines and sensationalised village gossip. There’s probably more than enough family gossip provided too, if he’s being honest. Maybe she’s trying to get information straight from the source. 

Or maybe, he thinks, she’s looking out for him and all. Their lot know what it’s like to believe you’re not worth the bother. 

Mostly, he sits there feeling a little awkward and not knowing what he’s meant to say. 

Lucky for him, Robert chooses that very moment to show up, nearly barreling into Kerry on his way in. She must’ve got tired of waiting for that pint, then.

“Oi, watch where you’re goin’ man!”

“ _You_ watch!” And with that solid comeback, he looks past Kerry and spots Aaron at the bar. And then his face lights up. 

It’s amazing how much of an effect seeing Robert walk into a room after a long day apart can have on his heart, considering they live together and Aaron’s seen him walk into many rooms. 

He’s missed him. 

He’d left early this morning while Aaron was still failing at keeping his eyes open, so all he’s had of him today is a kiss that’d been pressed into his hair and a glimpse of his blue shirt as he’d rushed out of their bedroom.

“I’m so sorry–” Robert says, rushing over, smile dimming a little in apology.

“It’s fine.” Aaron tilts his head forward, kisses him just on the edge of his mouth. 

“The traffic out of Hotten–”

“Robert, it’s _fine_.”

“You haven’t been waiting long, have you? You don’t need to go back already?” 

He should. He thinks about the pick-up he rescheduled for later in the afternoon so he can have a late lunch with his husband. The customer hadn’t been too happy with him. But Aaron’s feeling generous with Robert today, so, “No. All yours.” 

He’ll just reschedule again. 

That gets the smile to come back, with a little more intent this time. He feels a finger trace up the side of his palm and draw light circles against the inside of his wrist.

Ok, yes, he’s definitely rescheduling again. 

“It’s like I’m not even here.”

 _God_ , Aaron wishes that was true. 

Robert finally notices Mandy’s presence and looks quite put out by it, but Aaron decides it’s only fair he let him deal with her, having had to sit through an attempted heart-to-heart while waiting for Robert.

He isn’t done taking him in anyway. Robert’s hair is starting to curl ‘round his ears, he notes. He wonders how long he can convince Robert to let it grow out this time, before he starts to complain about it getting in his eyes and makes an appointment at that overly posh place in town. 

Of course, Robert doesn’t so much deal with Mandy as list their order and shuffle him over to the seats at the back of the pub, where he slides in so close it’s gonna be impossible to do anything without jabbing at each other with their elbows. 

Aaron doesn’t move away. Like he said, he’s missed him. 

“Why does Jamie Tate keep looking over?”

“Don’t worry about it.”


	2. A Tooth Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: _“You’re basically a marshmallow. Perfect for cuddling.” Aaron to Robert please._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story may cause cavities and result in reader needing a trip to the dentist's. If so, please be warned that the good drugs Aaron is on might just be an American thing? The rest of us are out of luck.

“Liv, _help_.” It’s a struggle just to get the words out, with weak hands pushing at his cheek so that his face is turned uncomfortably to the side, crick already forming in his neck.

“Can’t, got to get this on video,” Liv says, biting her lip around a wide smile.

Robert sighs, frustrated. He gets it, he does. He hadn’t been able to resist recording a few minutes of Aaron either, when they were still at the hospital. But after the scene they’d caused in the hospital car park, with Aaron loudly refusing to detach from Robert long enough to get in the passenger seat of the car and Robert glaring down the alarmed stares of passersby as Aaron got creative with his swearing, _and_ the bizarre drive that had followed with Aaron asking every 5 minutes if Robert thought the car was moving, he’s finding this entire situation a little less entertaining. Robert just wants a nap, now.

“You can’t make me,” says a voice from inside the car, muffled by wads of cotton.

“Aaron,” he tries again.

“ _No_.” Aaron pokes harder at his cheek.

Again, Robert sighs. Just as they’d been turning into their driveway, Aaron’s tongue had uncovered a recently vacated crevice in the corner of his mouth, and then another, and he’d demanded to know who had nicked his teeth.

Robert steps away, outside the reach of Aaron’s brutal fingers. He figures his neck deserves a break while he thinks. He watches Aaron watch him warily. There are bits of soggy, lightly pinking gauze sticking out the sides of his mouth, cheeks puffed up around them, and _still_ that incensed scowl on his face. He looks _ridiculous_ right then, and Robert’s face twitches to clamp down on a laugh.

Aaron’s wariness intensifies. “What?”

Robert shakes his head. He raises a hand towards him—Aaron watching his every move—until his fingers sink into the curls at the top of Aaron’s head. He watches the way Aaron’s shoulders reluctantly slump. “You look knackered, mate,” he says. He’s slipping into the voice he sometimes uses for a fussing Seb, he can tell. Low and sympathetic.

Aaron’s face slackens even further. His eyes are barely open by the time he’s able to respond with anything other than bliss at having Robert’s fingers rub against his scalp. “So much,” he finally admits, quite mournfully (and rather nonsensically), and then pouts. Or he tries to, lips not being able to stay firmly closed around those overstuffed cheeks.

“I know,” Robert soothes. “How about we get you some sleep, eh? And I’ll heat something up for later?” he asks, now scratching at the short hairs at the back of Aaron’s neck.

Aaron slowly nods, inching his head further into Robert’s hand.

Satisfied that he’s too far gone now to notice, Robert turns desperately back to Liv for help.

 _Alright, chill out_ , she mouths back, and stuffs her phone back into her pocket.

It’s as she’s making her way past the door of the car that they hear her.

“Oh good. You’re all here.”

Robert snaps his head down the driveway, fingers tensing around hair. He hadn’t even heard her coming. He checks on Aaron, sees he’s broken out of the calm daze Robert had managed to slip him into, and is now throwing betrayed looks back at Robert as he tries flimsily to cross over the centre console and into the driver’s seat.

Robert’s sure he catches something being muttered about _Jedi mind tricks_. He doesn’t know what Aaron thinks he’s doing. The keys are still with Robert.

“What’s _Pearl_ doing here?” Liv asks.

Wrecking his day, that’s what. He spares a last worried glance at the way Aaron seems to be pawing at the cover of the steering column and then rummaging through the glove compartment looking for something. A screwdriver, probably. Or a crowbar. _Flipping Dingles_. “Make sure he doesn’t try hotwiring the car.”

“I’m meant to be getting to college, you know?”

Robert has to raise his eyebrows at that. “You didn’t seem all that in a hurry when you were filming him just now.”

Liv narrows her eyes at him, half in warning, but jogs over to stop her brother from driving straight into the yard anyway.

Having temporarily settled _that_ , he turns to see Pearl’s already stood in front of him.

“I was afraid I might miss you, but it looks like I couldn’t have come at a better time.” She’s very nearly shimmying on the spot, more excited than Robert can cope with.

“You couldn’t have come at a worst,” he bites out. It’s been a long day.

Pearl loses some of her peppiness to indignation at his tone. “I beg your pardon?”

“Look,” Robert breathes out. He waves at the wheeled bag she’s dragged along beside her, filled three quarters of the way. “Did you need something?”

“Oh! Er yes, well,” she says. “I’m collecting donations for the church raffle this Sunday.” When that’s met with a blank look, she goes on to explain, “Harriet’s put up flyers all over the village. Haven’t you seen them?” She sounds shocked at the very thought.

“No. And we haven’t got anything to–”

Aaron—who seems to have given up on his amateur criminal antics—chooses then to get out of the car and lean over the top of it, wanting to know what’s keeping Robert’s attention from teeth rescue plans.

“Dear god,” Pearl gasps as soon as she sees him. She stumbles back a few steps, hand to her chest and eyes enormous with horror.

He looks a state, Robert will give her that. His eyes are rimmed with red, there’s now drool forming around the over-saturated gauze, and he’s grown impatient at the interruption, groaning long and thin and restless. “Robert, we have ta get back ‘fore they give ‘em away,” he stresses.

Pearl takes another uncertain half a step back.

“Tooth surgery,” Robert feels like he needs to explain. “Just needs to sleep off the medication.”

“Of course,” she says around a nervous smile. Her other hand is clutching tightly at the bag handle, her gaze flicking back to Aaron every now and again as if to make sure he stays staring at her in suspicion from a distance and doesn’t graduate to making any sudden lunges forward.

“Right, so…,” Robert nods at Pearl. She stares at him, not getting the message. “We’ll see you around, I guess.” He nods up the driveway.

Pearl sputters. “There must be something you can spare. You’d be helping out your community!” She follows Robert’s impatient glance back at the mill. “I can wait inside while you get the patient sorted,” she offers, stretching her neck to peak eagerly past Robert’s shoulders at the door behind them. “I can even help you look for something suitable.”

Absolutely not. The last thing Robert needs is to have Pearl set loose inside his home, rifling through cupboards.

“No, no,” Robert frantically shakes his head, “not necessary.” He turns to his grinning sister-in-law and widens his eyes meaningfully at her. “Liv can drop some stuff off at Harriet’s later today _._ ”

The grin vanishes. “ _Oi_ –”

“What you still _talking_ for?” Aaron wants to know right then. He’s begun to slowly trudge along around the car, to the end closest to Robert and Pearl, his hand reaching out for Robert and not even close to bridging the distance between them.

Robert sees the fist around Pearl’s bag handle tighten yet again, as she inches her body behind it. “Or actually, if you’re staying, Pearl, Liv’s going to be late for her classes if she doesn’t leave now. Could _you_ help me with him?” he nods over at Aaron’s hunched, drooling, irate form.

Aaron helpfully swings his arm out again as if on cue, doing his best impression of the undead.

Pearl blinks once at him, once at Robert, and then once more, down at her wrist. “Oh, dear. Is that the time?” she says. “I’ve _really_ got to get going. Lots more donations to pick up before dinner.”

“Ah.” Robert nods regretfully at her.

Pearl has already started moving back up the driveway. “I’ll let Harriet know to expect you, Liv,” she says to a spot somewhere behind him. Then, she turns to Aaron and steels herself. “Hope you feel better, Aaron,” she says, vowels stretched longer and slower, and voice a little louder than the one she’s been using.

Aaron doesn’t respond, aside from staring, transfixed, at the way her bag wobbles over the rough ground of their driveway when she hurries along with it.

“Right,” Robert turns back to his family. “Let’s go inside.”

“ _Inside_?” Aaron has never looked more offended. “Someone’s taken my _teeth_.”

God, are they _still doing this_? “No, not _someone_ ,” Robert says, being _very_ patient, “it was only the dentist. And you asked her to.”

Aaron scoffs like Robert’s trying to be funny (it comes out more of a puff, through all that cotton). “And why would I do that?”

“ _Oh my god,_ ” Liv finally snaps, which Robert thinks is a fair reaction. “We’ll get your teeth tomorrow. Okay?” She says this so forcefully, it leaves Aaron (and Robert too, if he’s being honest) looking a little stunned.

“But–”

“Tomorrow, Aaron.” Robert cuts in. “It’s not like they’re going to just hand it over, is it? We’ll need time to prepare,” Robert says, like that makes any sense at all.

Aaron nods, considering, like it does make sense. “Fine,” he finally concedes, staring at the ground in front of him a little dejectedly.

Robert exchanges a look with Liv, shocked that that worked. “Let’s go inside,” he says again, and locks the car.

Liv shakes her head, picking up her bag from where she’d apparently left it laying in front of the door. “Bus’ll be here any minute. You’re on your own with this one,” she points at Aaron. She looks visibly relieved at having an escape and Robert feels a little affronted on Aaron’s behalf. He’s not _that_ bad.

 _And anyway,_ he thinks, sulking, _she's not even had to deal with him as long as I have_.

After watching Liv all but run away from them, they _finally_ make it inside the mill, Aaron allowing Robert to usher him through with a hand around his waist but staying quiet otherwise. After an entire trip where he’d been anything but, this feels off.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asks, taking off his jacket. It was a simple, routine extraction, went off without a hitch, Dr. Groff had said. There shouldn’t be any complications from it. But...

Aaron looks solemnly at him.

Robert grows worried.

“You really think we can get ‘em back?”

Robert snorts. He’s talking about his teeth again, of course he is. Robert’s never letting him live this down. “We will,” he indulges him anyway. “You’ve got me helping, haven’t you?” he boasts.

Aaron's eyes widen and he looks absurdly touched by this, nodding bashfully at him.

Robert can only shake his head at him, disbelief tinged with affection.

Feeling more confident about their chances, Aaron begins taking off his jacket enthusiastically. A fair amount of wriggling goes on, and Robert watches saliva dribble menacingly from gauze until detaching and landing on Aaron’s shirt.

He winces. “Don’t think you need the gauze anymore, do you? It’s only making a mess,” Robert tsks. He helps to free Aaron’s arms from where they’ve momentarily gotten trapped in his jacket, and tosses it onto the back of the couch.

It happens so quickly. In one moment, Aaron’s holding his hand and bringing it towards himself, and in the next, Robert’s left staring at the pink saliva threading down Aaron’s scruffy chin to the two congealed, bloody, warm masses on his palm, a long, distant scream playing over in his head. A soft, tortured, “ _Aaron,_ ” is all he can manage in his disgust, much of his voice trapped in his throat.

The monster in question wipes at his chin. “You’re right, tha’s better,” he says.

Robert spares a few desperate seconds to press the edge of his palm (the one that’s empty) into his eyes. _I love him_ , he reminds himself, _so much_. “Okay,” he breathes out, voice still shaky. “Stay here. I’m going to get rid of–,” he looks down at the cooling lumps and _quickly_ looks back up, “–this and come help you up the stairs. Alright?” Robert looks up at said stairs, and his eyes catch at the too-wide spaces between the steps. “ _Don’t move_ ,” he pleads again.

He rushes over to their kitchen, dumps them into the bin (they dislodge after a firm shake, landing on top of last night’s takeaway container with a plop) and rinses off the wet slime left behind. He’s tearing out a sheet from the kitchen roll by the window for Aaron to wipe his mouth with when he hears the thud.

He’s never moved so fast in his life. He’s by Aaron’s side in a second with his heart seized up and in his throat, trying so carefully to manoeuvre him so he’s no longer lying prone against the unforgiving metal steps. “Are you ok? Are you hurt?” He gets nothing back for one terrifying moment, and then a choked off gasp for another, even more terrifying one, before Aaron turns around and laughs to his face.

“You idiot,” Robert says with so much relief. “What the hell were you doing?”

“Missed ya,” Aaron says, stroking up Robert’s arms where they’ve landed on either side of him. It isn’t really an explanation, Robert doesn’t think.

Unless… “Did you… do that on purpose?” he asks a little shrilly.

“No,” Aaron says. But his lips are twitching horribly and his glazed eyes are twinkling like he’s got away with something very clever and is exceedingly proud about it, and Robert has to wrestle with himself not to drop his husband back on his head.

He settles for staring at him in utter defeat instead. “Get up, you.” He sounds worn out, and yet, still fond, and Robert wonders if _he’s_ not quite right in the head either.

It’s a miracle they manage getting up the stairs and into their room without any more ‘accidents’. Aaron is still hanging onto him like a limpet, having decided he’d rather stay standing against Robert by the foot of the bed, arms coiled around his shoulders, than lie down.

“You’re bas’cally a marsh… marshmallow,” Aaron mumbles into Robert’s collar, this apparently being his reason for not wanting to let go. Fatigue has warped his words even more now he’s so close to their bed. “P’fect for cuddling.”

“Hang on, who’re you calling a marshmallow? This is all muscle, this.”

“Sexy marshmallow,” Aaron amends.

Robert feels greedy hands move down the planes of his back then, and slip under the waistband of his jeans, fingertips splaying against the outward curve of his arse before they grab at fabric and pull free. The hands come immediately back, slipping under his shirt this time to tug weakly at his skin.

“None of that, you can barely stand,” he says, deeply amused, and shifts Aaron’s head away from where he’s begun nuzzling his mouth at the base of Robert’s throat, ignoring soft whines of protest. “C’mon. Sleep,” he says to Aaron’s sulk. “I’ll join you.” He can’t help but smile at the way that makes _Aaron_ smile. Soft lad.

“Yeah?” Aaron asks.

“‘Course,” Robert answers. He drops a careful kiss onto Aaron’s—thankfully clean—lips as a reward for his cooperation, but also just because of the way he’s looking up at Robert—tired and trusting.

Aaron hums into it.

Robert drops another kiss just for that.

It goes a little easier after that. Robert’s ridding them of their jeans and shirts (Aaron hadn’t been too good at helping, his fingers fumbling over buttons and petting too long at skin) and guiding them under the covers. They shift and slide over each other, bodies moving in a dance their skin has long since memorised, until legs and hands and heads find their usual places on the other.

Aaron looks dead to the world not a second after he settles, and Robert takes the opportunity, with just enough afternoon light shining through the curtains, to stare at the way his lashes fan over thin skin underneath and leave behind the subtlest of shadows. So subtle in fact, they threaten to disappear against the dark smudges already present under his eyes—Aaron had been restless the night before; Hospitals aren’t his thing.

It does something to him, seeing Aaron when he’s like this. It always has. It’s a bit embarrassing really, the force of it, but taking care of him, being trusted to, so unreservedly... It makes something crack just under his heart; something primal, something foolish. Something beating against his ribs from the inside, desperate to prove that he can. That he will.

But it’s too wild a feeling for this moment here. Too loud to exist alongside the soft shadows of Aaron’s lashes and the whispers of his breath humid on Robert’s skin. So he breathes the feeling out instead, losing it in the scent of Aaron mixed in with antiseptic.

He starts to drift off before long. The distant murmurs of the village outside and the warm weight resting against him lull him into drowsiness. Impossibly, he shifts a hair closer to Aaron. The weather’s been getting warmer and he knows they’ll break apart soon in sleep when the heat gets to be too heavy, settling for just a hooked ankle or fingers grazing a back, but he wants to fall asleep like this. “‘Night,” he whispers into the skin closest to him. He proceeds to fall.

Aaron jolts awake with a violent snort.

Robert jumps as well, narrowly missing bashing his head into the side of Aaron’s, shock kicking his heart rate into overdrive. “What? _What_?”

“Thought I heard somfin’,” Aaron croaks.

Robert feels very close to sobbing. His confused heart thumps erratically on. “It wasn’t anything,” he says quietly, whines, really. “Go to sleep.”

“Do we ‘ave ghosts?” Aaron’s eyes are already back to being shut. His voice tapers away.

Robert doesn’t answer. With his luck, it’ll only wake Aaron up again. He feels him turn his head closer, his nose bumping softly along Robert’s in the movement. Robert smiles, bites his lip. Yeah. With his luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they stoopid.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! You can also find me on tumblr at [spamela-hamderson](https://spamela-hamderson.tumblr.com/)


End file.
